


Hidden

by deborah_judge



Category: Caprica (TV)
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 2, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-15
Updated: 2011-03-15
Packaged: 2017-10-16 23:40:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/170616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deborah_judge/pseuds/deborah_judge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarice has always been good at seeing the life hidden in metal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hidden

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lucidSeraph](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucidSeraph/gifts).



When Clarice was a girl she had loved to kneel before her statue of Aphrodite. Her parents thought it was strange, knew she was doomed to be a Sister, and understood nothing at all. It was not Aphrodite that Clarice worshipped, even then. There was something hidden in the statue, something greater behind the metal breasts and unrealistic curves, and she would pray and she would stare and kneel for hours in the hope that one day, somehow, she would find out what it was.

In college, as was expected, Clarice became a devote of Athena. The goddess of wisdom was a good patroness for a driven, ambitious woman of no small intellect. Classes took little effort. Her work with the Sisters took somewhat more, as did the various adminitrative tasks once the became the leader of their student organization. Still, there was always time to pray. Being seen praying was important, as she advanced. But more than that, it reminded Clarice of her childhood. She stared at the statue of Athena, watched light shift on Athena's metal helmet, and knew that there was a hidden power that she had not even begun to understand.

Sister Clarice was already a headmistress when she found God. Mar'beth had visited her at home, one of a long line of endlessly boring monotheistic missionaries, and Clarice had been just about to shut the door on her face when Mar'beth took her hand. Mar'beth's face was not metal and yet it shone. There was life in her, and it looked like love, and although it was nothing Clarice recognized still it looked like God.

The first Cylons shone like statues, like idols, like the images of Athena and Aphrodite that Clarice had so loved to worship. Inside them something was hidden. Of that Clarice was sure. It was not a false god, nor was it the One. It was something else, something that Clarice could only call life. Life hidden in metal. She supposed that was what she had seen all along.

 

  
A Cylon-like statue of Athena from the 7th century BCE. Taken from:  
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AMI_-_Athene.jpg


End file.
